


the only sentimental thing i could think of

by wrishwrosh



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Family Dynamics, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 17:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrishwrosh/pseuds/wrishwrosh
Summary: When Jack wakes up after the weekend that would have been the draft, Thea is sitting on the corner of his hospital bed. She’s pulling the stretched cuffs of a faded old Pens hoodie over her bitten down nails, and when she sees him blink open his eyes, she says “You dumb motherfucker,” and bursts into tears.Or, Jack Zimmermann has a sister.





	

**Author's Note:**

> apparently as far as canon is concerned the whole smh is a bunch of only children, and i am not about that. ergo, this random au.
> 
> one million thanks to foot girl for talking this over with me at 2 am like a champ, she is the best person in the world.
> 
> title from lemonworld by the national.

_ Oh Sh*t! Penguins Captain Bob Zimmermann and wife Alicia watch children Jack (9 months) and Thea (4 years) get up close and personal with the Cup! _

  
  


 

Thea doesn’t play hockey.  Thea also doesn’t get zits, and she's never failed a test in her life, and she is very good at getting the last word.  Thea’s better than Jack at a lot of things, but she's not a star hockey player.  Thea gets to be the smart one and the good-looking one who takes after Maman, so Jack is the strong, sporty one who’s going to follow in Papa’s footsteps. Jack thinks it’s a pretty normal family dynamic, but he doesn’t have a lot to compare it to.

  
  


 

Thea starts picking him up from hockey practice after she gets her driver’s license, a handful of days every month when Maman has an event and doesn’t have the time to come get him.

The fourth or fifth time she picks him up is in December, and he’s late coming out of the locker room.  He was the last person to finish packing up, because he’s having a bad, strange day and all he wanted to do after he got off the ice was just sit in his stall and shake. He’s a little relieved when he sees Thea’s car in the parking lot, because Maman always wants to chat on the ride home.  He doesn’t know what he would do if he had to make small talk about his teammates’ families today.

Jack shuffles over to Thea’s car and throws himself in the back seat with his hockey bag. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel as he slams the door behind him. This week, her nails are painted deep blue.  She and Maman get manicures every Thursday like clockwork, right after Thea’s Future Business Leaders club meeting gets out.  Maman always says they need girl time, to get away from all the hockey talk at home.

Thea meets his eye in the rearview mirror and asks, “So, how was practice?”

He buckles his seatbelt and fidgets for a little while before he even realizes that she said anything.

“Oh. Fine, I guess.” He sees Thea furrow her brow as she puts the car in gear and turns around to back out of her parking spot.

“Did Coach Tremblay keep you late? You’re usually out right on time with all the rest of the kids.”  That’s true, now.  The rink where his team practices instituted a new policy about private ice time, so now he can’t stay after to train extra.  Coach Tremblay offered to give Jack a special exception, but when he said Jack was a hard worker he was looking up at Papa in a way that made Jack feel sick.  Jack finishes practice with everyone else now.

“No,” he replies. “I was just--late.”

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Well, you know, if you ever have anything that you want to talk about, maybe something you don’t want to talk to Maman or Papa about, I’ll be here.” Jack doesn’t think he has anything in particular that he wants to say, but who knows?

Thea’s always known things about him before he knows them himself.

  
  


 

Kent comes to Montreal to visit when they have a few days’ break, they get careless, and Maman finds an empty fifth of vodka in the garage trash.  When Maman drops it on the table the next morning during family breakfast, Thea laughs and says it’s hers.  She gets an hour-long lecture on responsibility and good choices while Jack and Kent practice trick shots with the net in the driveway.

That night, Thea pulls him aside in the hallway and yanks at his shoulders until he has to bend down and meet her eyes.

“You owe me,” she hisses. “Be more careful.”

He twists out of her grip and shoulders past her. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he says.

  
  


 

Once during the summer when he’s home from Rimouski and Thea’s home from college, he sneaks down from his bedroom to get a snack and hears muffled voices from Papa’s office.  He hears his name, then he hears “Parson” and “pressure” and “meds”.  Even though he’s trying not to listen, he can’t really help it when Thea’s voice starts to get shrill and loud like it does when she’s furious.

“He’s not  _ you _ , Papa! He’s a teenage boy, he needs help and a support system and not for you and Maman to just ignore the problem as long as he’s putting up points!” Jack can’t hear Papa’s response, and he doesn’t know if it’s because Papa’s not yelling back or because the rushing in his ears is suddenly too loud.

The office door slams open and Jack is caught in the kitchen with his shaky hands in a box of protein bars when Thea storms out and down the hall. She props her elbows on the counter and leans her face into her clasped hands. 

“Sorry you had to hear that, Jacky, ” Thea says into her palms.

“I can take care of myself,” says Jack, before he can think.  His face is getting hot, his eyes burning, and he can feel his heartbeat in his chest.  He wishes he didn’t cry like a dumb kid every time he gets stressed.  “I don’t need you to fight with Papa for me about all this stuff you don’t even understand.”

She huffs. “Jack, I’m just looking out for you.  It’s messed up how much pressure Papa puts on you. Sometimes I think he forgets--”

“I don’t  _ need _ your help!  Papa trusts me, he knows how the system works, he’s showing me the ropes.”

Thea snaps her head up and barks out a terrible, unhappy laugh.  “Christ, Jack, you aren’t Papa!  Apparently nobody ever thought to tell you that, but you  _ are not him _ , and there’s no miraculous number of games you have to win before you canlevel up, or transform into  _ Bad Bob _ or whatever magical thing you think is going to happen.  You two are different people, and I don’t know why nobody else in this family  _ gets _ that.”

Jack’s tearing up for real now, just a little bit. “Don’t be a bitch, Thea.”  She gasps. Jack stumbles over his words. “Don’tdon’t act like you’re so much better, you’re not even that much older than me. Just because you’re jealous--”

“Wow, God forbid I ever just try and take care of my baby brother!  Fuck you, Jack.  If you’re gonna be a such a  _ child _ about this, don’t bother me when you lose it because your whole absurd, fucked up life stops matching whatever picture Papa put in your head.” 

When she stomps out of the kitchen, Jack slowly puts the protein bars back in the pantry. He’s not hungry anymore.

 

 

 

When Jack wakes up after the weekend that would have been the draft, Thea is sitting on the corner of his hospital bed. She’s pulling the stretched cuffs of a faded old Pens hoodie over her bitten down nails, and when she sees him blink open his eyes, she says “You dumb motherfucker,” and bursts into tears.

She spends the next two days sitting in a chair in the corner of his private room loudly refusing to get him more orange juice while Maman and Papa whisper with the nurses. When he hands her his phone, she silently deletes all of the messages from Kent.   
  


 

 

The next year Thea returns from a summer internship in New York City with all her hair chopped off close to her scalp.  When she comes home from the airport, Jack is lying on his belly on the living room sectional, like he usually is these days.  From his spot, Jack watches Maman press her hands to her mouth and ask nervous questions about Thea’s job prospects.

“If they dropped me from the interview process because of this then that would be discrimination, Maman, I don’t know! When they hire me it’ll be because I’m smart and I know what I’m doing, not because they like my hair. I’m not trying to be a  _ model. _ ”

Maman blanches, exhales hard, and turns on her heel to leave the room.  Once she’s gone, Thea pads over to the sofa.  She moves to sit on Jack’s head, so he shuffles backwards to make a space on the cushion.

When she sits, Jack mashes his face into her thigh and says, “I think it looks nice.”

She snorts. “Thanks. Don’t tell Maman you think that.”  He politely pretends not to see the way her hands quiver as she runs them through what’s left of her hair.

“Maman thinks I should go to college,” Jack says.

Thea twists her head to look him in the eye. After a minute, she responds, “I think that sounds like a good idea.”

“She’s started leaving brochures on my bed.”

“Sounds like Maman. Have you looked at any of them? Do you like the schools?”

Jack rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling behind Thea’s head. “I don’t know. I like Samwell, maybe.”

“Following in Maman’s footsteps, huh?”

He sighs. “Well, Papa’s footsteps didn’t really work out for me.”

“Aw, kiddo, you don’t have to live up to anyone if you don’t want to.” She starts pulling gently at his hair, and he knows from experience that she’s braiding tiny sections of his bangs.

“Is that what you did? Business school, that’s not what Maman and Papa did with their lives.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Anyway. Samwell has a good hockey team. And a good history program.”

Thea gives his bangs a soft tug. “That’s cool, Jacky. Do what you want."   
  


 

 

Jack calls Thea in a panic at 1 AM the day before his first ever college paper is due because he can't figure out how to export his bibliography, and Thea graduated from university with honors so he assumes she must know how to do that. 

When she picks up, she cackles breathlessly for a full minute before she can choke out, “Baby’s first real person problem!”  Then she explains the MLA format in a level of detail that’s partly obnoxious and partly soothing.

  
  


 

Thea uses some of her vacation days to visit Samwell with Papa during family weekend Jack’s junior year.  For some reason, she finds the Haus charming (“I miss college. There’s nowhere else I can go to really  _ absorb _ that combination of fear sweat and beer”), and it’s been awhile since she watched one of his games in person.

After they beat Yale, Thea hangs back with him and Papa and makes charming small talk with Bittle’s mother while Papa gushes over Bittle’s one shitty goal.  When Jack ducks out to shower, she shoots him a look before turning back to her conversation with Mrs. Bittle about her neighborhood in New York.

Thea drove to the game, so she beats him back to the Haus.  When he gets in the front door, she’s already perched crosslegged on the kitchen counter blithely eating a slice of Bittle’s best maple-apple.  As he passes the kitchen door on his way down the hall, she whips her fork out of her mouth and crooks it at him imperiously.  Jack drops his bag in what passes for the foyer and shuffles into the kitchen, sliding around the edges of the room and stopping a foot to her right.  He settles with his back against the counter and doesn’t look at Thea’s face.

For a few minutes, he just hears her rhythmically scraping the pie plate with her fork. Then she nudges him with her elbow.  “You wanna talk about why you were being such a dick tonight?”

He doesn’t respond.

“We both know Papa has taken a lot of hits to the head over the years, and even he noticed how you were acting,”  Thea says.

Jack bites hard at the inside of his cheek.

“Look, Jacky, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. If there’s some factor here that I don’t know about, I’m happy to be mean to this Bittle kid too, out of Zimmermann solidarity or whatever. Right now, though, I honestly think I like this pie more than I like you, so you’d better give me a really, really good reason.”

“I justI don’t think he belongs on the team.”

Thea goes quiet for a moment, then takes another bite.  With her mouth full, she asks, “Why is that? Is it because he’s gay?”

Jack feels himself go bright red. “Thea, no,” he sputters. “What kind of asshole do you think I am? He’s justhe’s not that good at  _ hockey _ .”

“Just checking,” she replies. “You know, with all the other shit you have going on in your head, I really don’t think now is the time to start adding pettiness to the equation.”

She elbows him until he turns around, then offers him a forkful of pie.

  
  


 

While he’s at prospect camp in Chicago over the summer, Thea sends him a selfie from New York Pride.  She has a tiny rainbow flag tucked behind her ear, and her shoulders are sunburned under a layer of glitter.

He sends back a picture of a goose.

  
  


 

They have a standing phone date every Sunday night, to chat about nothing in particular while Jack picks away at his thesis and Thea watches shitty celebrity news with the volume on low.  The Frogs call it Thea Time even though they’ve never met her, and Shitty always chirps him for the way his accent gets stronger when he gets off the phone. 

Thea finishes up a story about one of her incompetent coworkers and says, “Tell me about your disgusting frat house.  How are all those terrible boys you live with? How’s Eric?”  Thea follows all of Jack’s teammates on every kind of social media she has and steadfastly refuses to use their hockey nicknames.  She still occasionally ribs him about the time she asked about Justin and it took him a full minute to realize she meant  _ Ransom _ .

“You’re the one who follows Bitty on Twitter, you probably know how he is better than I do,” Jack replies.

“Tell me anyway.”

He obliges with a story about Bitty baking three pies the night before his American History midterm that turns into another story about Bitty teaching Chowder all the choreography to Single Ladies. It’s about to turn into a third story about Bitty shouting on the phone to his mother about jam when he hears Thea giggling on the other end.

“What? What did I do?”

“Tell me, Jacky, is it going to be a spring wedding? Are you thinking roses or carnations for the boutonnieres?"

“What do you mean,” he spits.  His jaw locks up, and he can feel a flush leaking down his face even though there’s no one in the room to see it.  Worst case scenarios start to spiral through his head. 

“C’mon, this goofy crush you have on Eric is the easiest target, don't tell me it's not fair game.”  Distantly, Jack realizes he’s hyperventilating. He can feel his heartbeat in his teeth.

“Oh, shit.  Sorry, Jack, I always take it too far. Jacky, kiddo.  It’s okay. Breathe with me.” Her exaggeratedly slow huffing and puffing comes through crackly, but it’s still a little soothing. He starts to settle. For a while, the only sounds are him and Thea, breathing together.

Slowly, she says, “Jacky, you know that I’m gay, right?”  She pauses, and Jack can’t think of anything to say. She continues, “I kind of know where you might be coming from here. If you dolike Eric, I’ll support you.  Partly because I’m your sister and I’ll support anything you do, and partly because I understand.”

“I like him a lot,” Jack says.

“I’m happy for you.” They breathe together a little longer. 

Eventually, he hears Thea start to shift around on the other end. Wryly, she says, “Anyway, Maman and Papa have already given up on getting any grandchildren out of me. So at this point, I don’t think they’re gonna be too devastated to hear that you won’t be providing any either.”

At that, Jack lets out a breathless giggle. 

“Hold on, wait a minute, we can’t both be the gay cousin. I’ll rock-paper-scissors you for the title,” she laughs.  She’s on a roll.

“Well, technically, um, I’m bi. So. You can be the official black sheep of the family.” It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud.  He feels a little childish, but he gets a little surge of pride because he isn’t crying.

“Thanks so much for your generosity,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

  
  


 

Jack pays $15 for overnight express shipping on a Falconers hat two days before he officially signs. 

Thea sends back a picture of the Falcs’ schedule with the dates of all their New York games highlighted and starred and a comprehensive list of the nicest restaurants between her apartment and Madison Square Garden with the heading “NHL Salary”.

  
  


 

At Jack’s graduation, Thea’s sitting between Maman and Georgia pretending not to cry.  Her nails are painted Samwell red and white for the occasion. When the whole group gathers on the lawn afterwards, she socks him in the arm and wraps him in a strangling hug.

He gets a mouthful of her hair and suddenly remembers the year he turned thirteen, when he hit his first big growth spurt and finally got to be Thea’s height. With their matching dark hair and Zimmermann jaws, they spent a whole summer getting mistaken for twins.

She snags his mortarboard, sets it on her own head at a jaunty angle, and sighs, “Shit, Jacky, when did we both get so grown up?”

He steals it back and says, “Now that we're both adults, we should get matching tattoos or something. To commemorate the big day.” 

“Good one.” She smacks him in the sternum without looking and flounces off to congratulate Shitty.

Later, when he’s saying goodbye to Bitty, he sees Thea and Papa chatting arm-in-arm.  When he makes eye contact over Bitty’s shoulder, Thea does something complicated and very pointed with her eyebrows in Bitty’s direction.  Jack glares back at them.

  
  


 

When all of Maman’s alumni events are over and Papa has  quoted Uncle Wayne at him like a sarcastic asshole,  and Jack is racing across the lawn in his graduation robe like a lovesick idiot, he thinks he hears Thea applauding behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> jack zimmermann is a stress crier, sorry i dont make the rules
> 
> also, i only know like three things about hockey, but i know a lot of things about being somebody's queer sister!! jack and thea's relationship is 100% based on me and my sisters, which is to say it's about 2/3 fuckery and 1/3 legitimate emotional support.
> 
> i have like one million more thoughts and headcanons about thea and the zimmermanns, so if you wanna hear more i'm wrishwrosh on tumblr as well!


End file.
